The air up there

By Hannah Wever
Review Staff Writer
Published: June 19, 2008

To create safer entrances for planes landing and taking off from the Orange County Airport the county is looking to buy pieces of solid ground, or rights to the air above them.
County officials, working with engineers and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are making the first steps towards acquiring several easements near the airport; some of those are parcels of land, and some are parcels of airspace.
Adam Switzer, a civil engineer with Delta Airport Consultants, updated county officials on airport expansion progress at an Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting last month.
“What the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is seeking to do is put in more protection for the entrances of the airport,” Switzer explained.
In order to expand the runway protection zone (RPZ) the FAA has its eye on about 25 separate parcels, less than an acre in many cases, he added. Once the county owns the land in the RPZ, it can control aspects like the height of existing buildings and trees in the area. And if it’s not possible to own the land, by purchasing easements in the air above the land, the county will have a say in property owners’ ability to construct a tall structure or allow trees to grow past a certain height.
“An aviation easement is a weird beast,” Orange County Attorney Todd Patrick said. Homeowners who live on solid ground beneath the easement, he added, “would be limited as far as erecting any structure that would penetrate that ‘floor’ where the easement comes across.”
Additionally, Patrick explained, trees growing within the easement could be trimmed or topped by the county as needed.
“It would give (the county) the right to go in and do that as we saw necessary,” he said.
“The FAA pays to cut the trees, the first time. Then it becomes the county’s responsibility,” Switzer said.
The total cost to the county to acquire land and parcels in the RPZ hasn’t been determined yet, but the majority of the expense-95 percent-will be the responsibility of the FAA. The state will cover 3 percent, and the remaining 2 percent of the expense will come from the county’s airport capital improvements fund.
Orange County Administrator Bill Rolfe said the fund contains just under $300,000 for land and easement acquisition--not enough obtain all the parcels the FAA has in mind, and complete all the legal paperwork which would go along with it.
“We’ll have to get the most important ones and drop the rest out,” Rolfe said.
Patrick said the list of parcels has already been reduced from the original number the FAA suggested.
One of the parcels the FAA is most interested in purchasing, Switzer said, is the Taylor property at the corner of Bloomsbury Road.
“The Helen Marie Taylor property-that is the one the FAA is really pushing to own. She could come out there and build a house 18 feet tall and there’s really nothing we can do to stop her,” he said.
In the past, county efforts to acquire the same parcel for utility easement purposes were unsuccessful and went to litigation. Patrick said the federal government is in charge of negotiating with property owners in this case.
Switzer said he anticipated amicable transactions. “We’re looking to work with the property owners,” he said, but so far he added, only a few landowners have been notified that the FAA is interested in acquiring their land, or easements above it.
The first steps towards airport land and easement acquisition, Patrick said, will be appraisals and surveys. A specialized expert has already been selected to perform the appraisals, but none have been performed yet. Once a dollar value has been determined for the land or air in question, the FAA will begin discussions with property owners.
“We would survey the property, appraise it then negotiate to acquire the easement,” Switzer said. “This is probably a multi-year project in the FAA’s eyes, in terms of acquiring these easements.”
Rolfe said the cost for each property or easement is impossible to determine at this point.
“It all depends on how big the property is and how high the easement is,” he explained. Once sites have been surveyed and appraised, the county will conduct individual, private negotiations for each parcel, he added.